Plants
Very exciting: I raided Robyn’s garden in the ‘Rat, and have a big lot of succulents to pot. She has lots, thanks to the former owners, which is very nice for me. I also have a bit of rosemary, which I really hope will take – didn’t, last time.
Too, when I came home, I swear the roses had doubled in buds over the weekend. Which was nice. I also decided that I wasn’t going to leave my flowers out in the garden where few people see them – not even me that much – so I cut the daffs and brought them in, and some moonlights too. I really hope I get some jonqs – they haven’t flowered yet…
Thunder storm
And there it started; hail and all. Fairly heavy rain for a few minutes, although it’s settled down now. Everything electrical flickered – the DVD player reset itself and the stereo started itself up. How exciting.
Hoorah! for warm weather
Particularly when you have two loads of washing to dry.
That makes me sound like my Mum. Not to worry; that’s fine by me.
Anyway… fabulous weather yesterday and today… last night was so nice, I really felt like going to a party. And today too – it feels to me like a cool break after some rather warm weather in summer. Which I know is a very strange feeling to have at the fag end of winter. I’m concerned that the beginning of spring will now be greeted with a spell of frost, which would make me incredibly sad. I will enjoy it nevertheless, and hope that spring manages to have rain for our dams but also be warm-ish.
I just heard some thunder, which is unsurprising if this is like a cool spell in summer. Effective impetus for getting the washing in, though.
Plants
Always nice to come home after a couple of days and see how the garden is – particularly at the moment, with bulbs happening. The daffs are looking well; have a couple more bells out, which is nice; and I think the third hyacinth might be growing, which is very odd indeed. The climbing rose is looking nice with its white flowers – Mum feels a bit guilty because we had a hack at it and might have chopped off lots of flower potential. Oh well; can’t have been too unhappy if it’s decided to flower anyway.
Looking at Mum’s and Aunty Allison’s gardens has given me all sorts of ideas. Allison has a very shady spot she’s basically turning into a fernery, but with some other stuff too: I am so going to find myself some helleborus, I love it! And I’m going to try alyssum and violas in the front and just let them go a bit wild. Very exciting. I keep having to remind myself not to do anythign drastic (like remove the hedge) until autumn, when we’ve been here a year and have seen all the garden has to offer. I must also remember to see if I can find a home for the hedge, come ripping-out time. Which reminds me: the possibly-violets in the courtyard, behind the hedge, which I thought J might have killed with the ladder, have ressurected themselves. I rather wondered if they might do that.
Flowers and stuff
Don’t recall whether I mentioned that the hyacinths flowered – 2 out of 3, anyway. That was very exciting, and they smelled fantastic; they’re dead now. Yesterday morning I discovered that I had a miniature daff flowering, and at least one other is on the verge… AND one of the other bulbs also has a flower! Not sure if it’s a Bell or a Moonlight Thing; must check the packets to compare.
In other news, I dug up a struggling azalea today, and I hope it appreciates the efforts I went to in doing that and actually survives; no idea if I got enough root mass, but it was not very happy at all behind the hedge. Neither is the other one, but I haven’t got any more potting mix so it will have to wait. So will the tiger lily seeds which Kate gave me the other day, which was very exciting to come home to – a bromeliad as well, and a fuchsia cutting!! It was such a lovely thing to come home from school to.
Other things are going well. Mum massacred the roses, but they needed it; they are already growing back. New zygo is flowering – old zygo has been a mass of flowers for a few weeks now – coriander is still growing! All very good.
World hum
Have added a new link to the ever-expanding side bar: but how on earth could I have forgotten to add World Hum? One of my favourite ever websites, their tag is “travel dispatches from a shrinking planet.” I’ve read some of the coolest stories thanks to this site, and found some of the weirdest websites (travel by plane a lot? There’s a site to take pictures of your in-flight meal, post and rate them, or a site that tells you the best airports for sleeping in). Love it.
Bad ideas
I started playing StarCraft again on the weekend. I gave it up for ages and ages because I got up to a level that was too difficult and I decided I didn’t like it anymore. Then, on the weekend, I thought it would be fun to try playing a game with J. Bad idea; he has a level of intuition with computer games that just makes it totally unfair for me to play against him (did I mention he has built a new desk for the study? Very nice). But I have started playing by myself… which is not good, since I have reports to do at the moment.
The other thing I think was a bad idea was getting a hair cut. Other people will still think it is fairly long, but I am suffering some anxiety because it just feels too short. Hopefully I will learn to cope with this.
Bush and guns
I thought the man was a fool, but not this much of an idiot: I just heard on the radio that Bush has framed the gun that Saddam was found with, in his little bolt-hole, and hung it on the wall in the Oval Office. My goodness! How tacky and passe, for a start, to have such a modern weapon hanging on your wall.
Great article
This article is about a very interesting exhibition in Melbourne at the moment. They should have looked at loo doors at unis as well as in pubs, since students often express philisophical and political musings there, as well as having full-blown arguments
Gardens
My zygo has flowers! Very exciting. Well, they’re very much buds at the moment, but they will be flowers and there are lots of them. A succulent-y thing which I had thought was dying has also got proto-buds happening, so that will be interesting, and a plant I have to give back to Kate tomorrow has buds too (sigh). A lot of the bulbs are doing well – Mum informs me that yes, they should be growing now and flowering in Spring; however, some of her daffs have decided that now is the season for flowering, so I don’t feel that my plants are nearly so daft. I have some autumnal roses happening (they’ll be winter roses by the time the buds open), and the coriander is mostly still alive which is amazing. Sage is not doing so well; seems to be getting a bit et, actually. The resurrected cyclamen has flowers coming on.
It’s all very exciting.
Randomly Yours, Alex 